One child has inherited AGAIN

YABU….your two children have two different families with only you in common.

This

All you can do is adjust your will.

Your other son isn't their biological relative, they had no obligation to include him in their will. It would be very unusual to. People like to provide for their own. They are aware divorces and estrangements happen in blended families.

You've had 2 children with 2 different men, of course they will have different lives.
Yabu to expect 2nd sons family to make up for your poor choice of 1st sons family.

How much £ are we talking?

Are you going to leave everything of yours to your DS1 to make it somewhat fair OP?

Life happens - one of your children could have had a very successful career more than the other, one of them could have won lotto and not the other. I hope you do not pass your feelings onto your older child.

Thats me forgetting how old I am! I'm 40 and this was about ten years ago so everyone was very much an adult, I should have said the older generation. I assume my younger cousins were consulted and agreed, our generation in general weren't involved (what I was trying to get across was that I wasn't privy to the conversation or part of the agreement!) sorry.

I totally understand that this is very hard to watch.

I bet any female siblings of the male grandchildren are pretty pissed off too.

Oh, it's you with the older kid that wasn't invited to the wedding?

Anyway, You blended your family but you can't force your husband or his family to leave your older child wealth. They don't see him as a family member, your older kid is your family member.

My partner refused to consider changing our wills leaving more to elder child who was at the time very unlikely to inherit from his own father.
He has absolutely no say in what you do with your will

Just be more generous to your son from your previous marriage in your own will
.

There’s nothing you can do so you have to let it go.

Leaving money only to males is horrible, but leaving money to grandchildren is a nice thing to do. Doesn’t your husband see his child and his siblings children as individuals? His siblings won’t see any more benefit from their Mums legacy than he will, so I find his attitude on this weird. Most people would be thankful their child is set up.

You need to try and see other perspectives on this. It was always going to be a possibility when you gave your eldest a step family.

I don’t think it is unreasonable depending on the amount being inherited. OP and her husband might not even be able to match the amount anyway!

The older generations have a lot of wealth.

Can you pay into an insurance policy and make your eldest sole beneficiary?

I think part of coming to terms with this is to accept your part in it. You had two children with two different dads. They therefore inevitably have different life experiences (e.g. DS2 has grown up with his dad in the same household). You can't really expect the whole world to bend to make their experiences as similar as possible.

To share a similar-ish situation from my own life. DS's dad is an idiot - we split up when DS was very young. His idiocy has created all sorts of problems for me and for DS. Does that drive me mad? Yes. Do I also take responsibility for having a child with an idiot? Yes.

Another thing to bear in mind is that many people get no inheritance at all - your elder DS is on the property ladder and on track to inherit from you. So while of course it must sting that his brother is so much better off, he himself is vastly better off than many.

A deed of variation legally cannot be done that decreases the inheritance of a minor.

I know it's hard for you to see this but I think you should have maybe foreseen this a little bit. These are not your oldest son's family , it was always unlikely that your oldest son would inherit from them. Did you genuinely not foresee that.
I think your best bet is to hope your younger son does something for his older brother.

Sorry, just to be clear, you tried to convince your partner to change his will and leave more money to his step child than his biological dc? That is pretty nuts if so.

Yes, that's not reasonable. You can leave what you want to whoever you like in your will, but you can't control his!

Shit that sucks. Sorry OP. No advice really but I too would want to even that up. Hopefully your son would too so there won’t be any hard feelings.

This is blended families. No-one has been unreasonable here.

Also I think if you want to leave your whole portion of your assets to your elder DC to try to even it out, that’s up to you, but you shouldn’t be demanding your DH does the same.

Is your partner your husband? What do your wills currently say? You could just amend your will so that your estate goes only to your older son to level the playing field between them. You don't have to discuss the contents of your will with your partner but I'd let the children know, and the reasons for it.

Your younger DC might decide to share their inheritance with their older sibling.

Your MIL was right to do as she did. Your eldest DC could have inherited some of the money, gone on to get married, got divorced and it end up having to be shared between him and his ex. Expecting a child who isn’t related to you to inherit from you is poor.

I genuinely can’t contemplate my two sons having such vastly different lives.

It's always going to be the case when you choose different fathers for them. They might have different health outlines due to genetics, or different personalities and intellect due to their fathers. All sorts of things could give them vastly different lives. Thankfully this is just money.

I couldn’t get worked up over this.